For the bathroom i got a trick for you. If you combine the motion sensor in the bathroom with a door sensor you can check if someone is in the room. If motion is detected inside the room an the door is closed you know there is someone in the room. That can also be Used for other rooms. Motion only has to be detected once in a room when the door is closed.
@@jarongebhardt I use this as well for the bathroom, but some people seem to keep the bathroom door closed even if nobody is using it, which makes wasp in a box a bit less good. I also use HASS.Agent to expose lastactive and sessionstate of my PC in my office to detect activity and keep the light on.
"If you look directly at an LED strip, you can clearly see the individual lights and it looks really fugly." I'm not sure which is funnier - that quote, or the fact that UA-cam captioning actually captured that correctly. 😄 Great videos Alan! Thanks.
For LED strips, I like the 12V WS2815 type with 60 leds/m controlled with an ESP32 flashed with WLED. Pros: Cheap, bright even over a long length, individually addressable (each light can be controlled independently for amazing effects), and fully controllable with Home Assistant. Cons: Requires some wiring and ESP32 flashing knowledge (but not much) and they drain some energy even while off. Also Muzata makes some amazing LED covers that diffuse the light so well as to make them nearly spotless in direct viewing. Basically lightsabers. Thanks for your content!
To stop my office lights turning off when I'm sitting still, I made a chair sensor using a cheap pressure sensor strip and a Zigbee contact sensor. There are few tutorials online on how to do this. My light automation has a condition to not turn the lights off if the chair is occupied, and it's been flawless so far. I had looked at a mmWave motion sensor instead, but the chair sensor worked out cheeper and easier to set up as it doesn't need wired power, and the parts were also readily available.
Bathroom lights also work well with a temp/humidity sensor. So the lights don't go off until while showering. I also use this for controlling the bathroom extractor fans. Really enjoying the house project of yours so far. Keep up the good work 💪🏻
@@cameronw99 I'm using the sonoff ZigBee temperature sensor and it only updates when humidity changes. If you search home assist forums, for "shower humidity fan" youll be in the right direction. I'm using a binary sensor that looks for humidity change against a humidty sensor I have in the bedroom, in the opposite room. It's been flawless for me so far. Kicks in withing 20 seconds of the shower running
A combination of motion and humidity could work well, or you can go for the mmWave sensors One thing I find with humidity sensors is if it is raining outside, the humidty tends to be higher. I don't mind the fan kicking in randomly, even if the bathroom is not occupied as that keeps the airflow when humidity is high, but I don't want my lights randomly staying on just because humidity is high. It can be half hour or more after a shower is completed for humidity to drop, so for me humidity would keep the lights on that long too. I'd rather use mmWave sensors if the motion sensor is not positioned correctly to pick up the movement in a shower. Not sure about your habits, but I tend to move a little when showering, which is enough to trigger the Aqara motion sensor with a delay of 5 minutes after no motion before the lights are off.
@@cameronw99 I have Aqara Temp/Humidity sensors and they respond quickly. I did have a Tuya one that was very slow, I found it useless in the bathroom as it also was very slow triggering the fan so I changed it out. You could try mmWave sensors, but in a bathroom, if you want your sensor to trigger your fan, it is likely better to get a humidity sensor that responds in a reasonable time.
@@EsotericArctos the way around this for when humidity is high in your house because of rain is to have 2 temperature sensors on the the same floor, but opposite rooms and base the humidity change compared to your base humidity in the other room. I created a binary sensor with the help of the HA forums that turns on when it's higher and use a state trigger to controll the fan automatically
Using a smart plug that measures power usage works really well for keeping the lights on whilst sitting still at a computer or watching TV. Set a condition that if the computer monitor or TV are switched on, don't turn off the lights! Thanks for the video, very thorough.
For keeping motion live while sat at my desk, and to prevent my office plunging me into darkness, I find a pair of motion sensors works well. One in the corner of the room for general motion, and then one mounted under the desk. The one under the desk, because it's so close to my legs, picks up the slightest motion, so even when I'm sat still and the main room sensor doesn't pick me up, the one under the desk does.
For detecting me when I’m at my desk I have a cheap Sonoff motion sensor sticked in to the bottom of my monitor. I was afraid that this will not work but I have never had any time when the light turned off when I’m working. Typing and moving a mouse is enough. Now I have an Everything Presence One and it is freaking awesome.
Great video, as always! From a different perspective: I do everything in Node-red, and use HA just as a hardware abstraction layer and state/timer vehicle. 1. Sonoff hardware does indeed send a 'no motion' signal after ~1 min of no-motion, and then it's ready to send a 'motion' signal again immediately. It's still nowhere near as good as a radar in detecting occupancy, but for places like kitchen where you're moving around and not sitting still, it's okay. 2. Aqara hardware doesn't send a 'no motion' signal, it's generated by the software. So even if you're moving around, Aqara will still 'report' no-motion after a software-defined timeout. That's why I (historically) ignore 'no motion' signals and monitor occupancy in software (or via a radar). 3. I discovered that if I clean the surface with methanol just prior to attaching my LED strips, it holds - rock-solid. Even on the back of my TV, which gets warm :) 4. Radars allow you to be really aggressive when turning the lights off, I love that! 5. In my experience, light meters inside Aqara motion sensors suck. 6. If you have drop-ceilings, it's very easy to put a 5V adatopr and a radar there.
I found using timers created as a helper work heaps better for turning off the lights than relying on the no motion of the sensors.I have been caught so many times standing in the dark and these timers have solved my lights turning off while im in the presence of a motion sensor.. Great vid this with good tips and great explanations of creating the HA routines.
Great Explanation. I create a boolean helper for each zone. This boolean is used instead of the motion trigger. The boolean can be controlled based on additional requirements (like the TV playing something). This way I can make sure the lights stay on if the TV is playing but I'm sat still.
I was using single on and off automations, the wait command is great and has now halved my automated lights list. I have a seperate Aqara motion sensor in a window facing east and it is ideal to monitor for a certain light level before running any automations. I have reused my old PIR alarm sensors by use of Konnected and then added additional sonoff or aqara sensors. I have found the addition of a sonoff sensor in front of my computer is enough to keep my lights on. Also, it is worth turning lights off gradually so you have chance to move again!
Thanks for informative video! One suggestion though: Imho in the automation it's better to have a separate trigger for turning off the lights. Your trigger would then be "No motion detected for 30s". This will have the automation not staying in running state while still waiting for the motion sensor to go inactive for 30s. 😊
I have used the same tricks, putting the motion sensor under the bedside table, etc. and you covered those nicely. I also use the aqara FP1 sesnors for small motion changes in the areas where me and my wife don't move a lot, those work great. Also found a cheaper version of these that now works well with the new version of HA and that's a Microwave Radar Sensor Module LD2410 , you can get them for around 6 dollars US and they work great. I've used wled and a D1 mini for my LED strips everywhere, behind TV, under the bed, under the kitchen cabinets, under the bathroom vanity, well you get the idea.
Overall a great video. The changes I would make is to turn the light strips red at night to keep you night vision and way too many batteries to change after a year,
I do find the setting up of Automations rather more difficult in HASS than they are in HE so this video was very helpful. It looks as if there are a lot of options in HASS though automation wise and I am sure I will get used to it in time. I have a motion sensor under my office desk that senses small movements. Unless I nod off in the chair, that often happens after dinner, my office lights stay on. I have a 15 minute inactivity interval set on that for switching lights off, it works a treat.
Very usefull information. Regarding motion sensors, I switched to presence detection sensors for rooms where this is necessary, like office or toilet. Motion detection for areas where you only pass, like hallways.
For the bathroom I also have an aqara door/window sensor, so when the door closes and motion is detected, the light doesn't turn off until the door opens again, and the motion goes to "cleared". My full bath doesn't have smart lights yet, but I will have to augment this with a humidity sensor as well, as we generally leave the door open for ventilation (old house, no vent fan) and to allow the cats access to their litter. For all motion detected lighting, I create two input booleans for each automated light/group - "Do not disturb" and "Leave lights on" that will disable the "on" automation or disable the "off" automation, respectively. I also have two input number helpers that allow users to define their own low-light threshold for turning on lights, and brightness threshold for turning them off, as I've noticed my wife and I have... differing opinions as to when lights should be on.
I've been using HA for one week and I've done three separate motion light automations for my hallway with different time conditions for day/evening/night. This made me think I could just have one automation with three Choose Actions with different time zones instead. Thanks for the tip!
12:20 - If you don't have a system that detects luminosity you can create a sensor for the sun elevation and set it to activate only when the sun is below is a certain value. This comes in handy, for me anyway, as some rooms with this might get too dark 90 minutes before sunset. You can also create a luminosity sensor that does a reasonable job based on time of day and weather for your lighting automations (again, only necessary if you don't have the Aqara model with the luminosity sensor built in, which will be far more accurate). For folks that are new to Home Assistant, the values for the sun elevation can be determined through the "History" button (and possibly plugging in a few other sensors to compare time of day with states). Good video 👍
Hi Alan, great series of vids keep up the great work. I also have leds coming on the landing to guide me to bathroom of a night, going to build a floating bed with leds, and love the bath one you've done going to copy that, looks amazing. One thing I think you could be interested in is the led colour can affect your sleep. White light can wake you up, take you out of sleep mode, and affects your night vision. By making light red, you can see with your natural night vision, plus it doesn't interrupt your sleep rhythm so you will go back to sleep quicker and deeper. I have mine set to red after 10pm until 7am rest of day is white.
Wonderful informative video. I don't think I have ever seen anyone install a LED defused cover like that. We just hold them on top and lightly tap it in.
Great job Alan. Great overview of strategies and ideas for lighting, along with a perfect level of detail to walk someone less experienced with Home Assistant to do it themselves, without so much focus on the technical that it might turn off someone who is not using Home Assistant. One of my favorite videos you have produced to date!! Looking forward to more of these.
This is such a terrific video... thank you! I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't know the Aqara motion sensors I already owned had the illuminance entity. This is a game changer for me as I was previously using the sunset/sunrise condition, but now with your tip my lights also come on during cloudy days. Your tip on how to easily automate one light with using multiple motion sensors is also super-helpful. Slowly but surely, my wife is seeing the benefit of the whole home automation thing, thanks in large part to your helpful tips. I'm grateful to have found you and your videos!
Bathroom's can be tricky but if you pair a motion sensor with a door sensor and a smart switch that controls the exhaust fan, you can add conditions to not turn off the lights if the door is closed or if the exhaust fan is running. Works great for me
Thanks, Alan, for another informative video. I have a couple of similar automations running. With my landing, bathroom and bed LED strips, they switch to red between 10pm and 6am. This lets me see where I am going without bringing me fully awake. It helps preserve my night vision, lessens the interruption on my sleep pattern and is less likely to wake up my partner. Helps you get to sleep quicker too. Try it, you won't go back to white.
Yeh, I've seen a few people doing this and it makes sense. I just don't want my partner to ask me why we're living in a brothel, so it's best for me to stick with white for now 😉
Pure genius! I have aquara pir sensors in my living room and kitchen (I've got a everything Presence One ready to go but no case yet). I've been wanting to add an led strip under my handrail on the stairs for a while and never thought of "sticking" one on the ceiling... GENIUS! Ordered the sonoff sensor today and will "stick it up" tomorrow (LEDs are already done). Thanks for the idea. 👍 I've also set my bedroom up with led strip but on a timer in HA. I work rotating shifts and find setting the leds to a dull red colour means it doesn't disturb Mrs Wife (Bonus points) while I have enough light to get changed by. We also we have the same LEDs working with an aqura push button (once for the bedside light, twice for the other half's, and push and hold toggles the led strip (wife's does EXACTLY the same so we can turn on/off each others bedside light (very useful)). Similar in the kitchen where the aqura pir will change the colour and brightness depending on time (9pm - 6am the LEDs are orange and 6am - 9pm their white). We find the white light in the morning too much ,🤣🤣 Sometimes it's the simplest things...
Very nice! I agree with the bright white and orange. You don't want to feel like you're in a hospital or 1970's office building when you wake up in the morning. But I prefer the bright cool white for when I'm cooking dinner, chopping food etc.
Hi, another great video with lots of good tips.This subject is the basis we all need and use and I must admit that I learned some new things, which improved my current motion sensor automations. Thanks and keep up the good work 👍
I've had Bluetack and similar take the paint off the wall if it has been in place for several months, but I understand why you'd do it. It is a little better than double sided tape. With LED Strips, unless I specifically need/want colour, I will get strips that are warm white/cool white only. I tend to build my own using ESPHome as the controller and the BTF Lighting strips are really good. For colour, again I prefer not using Hue as I prefer to use addressable LED's. I find the double sided tape on BTF lighting strips to be amazingly good. I have LED strips in the kitchen that have been held up for over 5 years now with just the original adhesive strip. On DIY strips, WLED is also really good. mmWave sensors are really great for the areas, like living rooms, where you may be too still for normal PIR's, but I do still use PIR's for the initial turn on as mmWave sensors are a bit slow. I thought the Aqara FP1 was also a corded device, requiring a power supply? Not sure why you pointed that out with the Everything Presence 1 and not for the Aqara offering.
For WLED I can highly recommend the controllers by Athom. I have both versions of the individually addressable strip controllers - the standard one and the sound activated one. They are very well priced and simple to use. Cheers 😊
Great video, thank you. I've moved to a new place and am starting from scratch, so the automation examples with the wait for trigger, choose, etc are great for me to work from. I was using all sorts of conditions and multiple sensors and automations to achieve the same thing as a single automation in your example
Grouping snesors into group was a nice information! thanks! Also sun bellow horizont..i only saw sunset and sunrise..never seen it have other options too :)
Hi, I really found this video useful, especially the part for grouping motion sensors: I had a rather complex automation in a room with two motion sensors, but with a group it became a real simple automation. Despite the 'shitty remark' you've got a new subscriber :)
@@HomeAutomationGuy yup I didn’t realise it was straightforward to do this with motion sensors either. Going to use this in the hall where I currently only have “good enough” coverage.
It's not something you really *missed*, but it's something that I have to account for in almost all my automations. Pets (and/or robot vacuums). If I had a dollar for every time a cat or a dog set off a motion detector, I'd have, well, a lot of dollars. So, I have to use placement wisely, and also use some Third Reality motion sensors because if you turn them upside down, they don't see triggers on the floor. I've also had to use door contact sensors (for the bathroom, as an example) in addition to a doorway motion sensor. If the door is closed, lights and fan on. If the door is open, lights and fan off. Though Switchbot has a door contact sensor that also has a motion sensor, so I probably should have used that. Plus, we have a cat that is obsessed with light strips. I guess he can hear something in the light strips, because he's made it his mission in life to find them and rip them down. It's always the edge cases that get you.
Alan, have you tried using Reusable Nano Double Sided Adhesive Tape or Pads to mount your smartdevices? I have used Scotch Restickable Tabs and find these can be easily removed without residue marks (unlike Blu-tac), washed and reused, which for battery powered devices is useful.
I'm surprised no one uses door sensors together with motion sensors. Bathroom is the most obvious application but other rooms can work too depend on the layout. If you closed the door and then motion is detected inside the bathroom, you do not turn the light off at least till the moment the door is opened, and then you go back to motion sensor. Assuming you have only one door and you close the door when taking a dump. I have this set up in my home for a while and it works like a charm, never have to wave my hands sitting on the toilet or touch switches.
I currently have 2 motion sensors in my office. One under my desk and one on my desk. I've combined them in Home-Assistant as a group. If my PC in my office is on, the interval is 15 minutes, and if my PC is off, the interval is 20 seconds. This way, while I'm sitting still for a couple of minutes behind my desk, the lights don't turn off.
Great Video! As mmWave radar i really do recommend the Tyua ZY-M100-S: ZigBee based, wall-mounted version and ZY-M100-L: ZigBee based, ceiling-mounted version. Quick detect (no need for PIR) and has also light detection. Super quick installation into HA Zigbee2mqtt. Have both for a few weeks and works just fine so far.
I use a Phillips outdoor motion sensor for lux readings for automations in the house .. usually 1000 lux outside for lights .. 500 lux for my landscape lights
@@HomeAutomationGuy you’re welcome .. I used to use light sensor on individual aqora sensors to control my inovelli switches per room but like you my upper and lower stairs gets different light so that’s why I just use the outdoor sensor lux for every room .. I mean if it’s dark outside it’s dark outside 😂
Hi, You can also configure your lights with condition, about the state of your/partner's phone, if is charging and you wake uk first the light won't be on, or with bed presure sensor, if someone still sleeping after x time even after sunrise, light won't turn on 100% brightness :)
I use light level to decide if my motion controlled lights should turn on irrelevant of the time of day. By using a delay time for the "off" command I have it all done in a single automation. With this I added a condition that the automation will still act of the lights are already on so that the delay for off is restarted. This way the lights won't turn off if we are in and out of the area a lot despite the lights creating a light level value that would normally prevent the lights turning on. I works perfectly. For areas of minimal motion I too use the mmWave devices, but a different one to you.
I haven't got any mm wave sensors working yet (I do have a bluetooth one that isn't playing) but will sort that soon, besides that this is exactly my learnings too, I set up my automations the same way with 1 slight difference, just to keep things tidy I will run all of the automations for i.e. "kitchen lights" in 1 automation, with all of the "sub" automations run in parallel. And have also started using timer helpers as these are quite versatile and can be used in other automations, and have different time values written to them in different scenarios, and are re-start proof. I also have a mixture of 433 rf sensors (esphome rf bridge) and aqara zigbee (didn't have much luck with the sonoff ones) as I had these from early on before the zigbee dongles, and the range is awesome. We haven't touched a switch in years Good video, keep em coming
@@HomeAutomationGuy they are handy, my example here is my el cheapo £8 433MHz doorbell which is triggered by my Broadlink RMpro, which has a few different sounds programmed into it, 1 will chime if the kitchen door is opened, by using the kitchen light timer (which is also used for turning on my re-purposed phone screen with fully kiosk, emby etc). I have 2 conditions that the PIR is off and the kitchen light timer is "idle" it will chime (essentially an occupancy sensor). No need for it to chime if someone is in the kitchen. I also set the timer if someone is detected getting home, and I set this to 6 minutes to allow time to get in the house, which will then revert to 2 minutes when PIR is detected. Nice
Yujiled sells some very high CRI rgbw strips in 12v and 24v that go great with a Shelly rgbw2 controller. Initial configuration of shelly is occasionally annoying in my experience, and I recommend a separate vlan, but those are the only drawback. They are rock solid in homeassistant once installed and configured. If you want the ultimate colour effects you can pair an rgb strip next to one of yujileds violet strips for eye piercingly deep purples. Since the shelly can only control 4 channels you’re giving up high CRI white, but for effects nothing else comes anywhere close.
From the I have learnt that you are using the „Wait for trigger” to turn off the lights, while I am using the „Choose” option and I define both triggers at the start.
about the bathroom, I added a doorsensor to the bathroom door. And on HA I made a "wasp sensor". Now when the door is closed and the motion sensor detects motion the wasp sensor is turned on untill the door is opend again. No moore lights turning off when doing your business.
Great video ! While on toilet ,would you be able to post on this comment the yaml script for the LED bathroom light in that time frame ,I would like to apply that automation for my kitchen undercabinet LED. Just a few things different from the PIR sensor which in my case is Sonoff Presence Sensor but still want to apply that script to my desire.Thank you !!
What I've learned from DIYing different custom sensors is that the temperature sensors cannot be combined with nearly anything. If the are, they pick up heat from the ICs in around and you get +"something random" to their readings.
Wondering what the simplest way to install a led strip to the underside of a wooden staircase hand rail. I want to hide the wiring as much as possible so I'd want to drill a small hole right where the railing is attached to the wall. Is there a recommended strip that has a low profile and/or flexible connection so that it could be easily installed flush with the bottom of the railing with minimal chisel work/modification to railing to make it clean? I'd probably be mounting the light strip in a flat channel so you couldn't directly touch it.
So the sensors Lewis makes that you talked about at tbe end. I wonder if there is any thought to putting a wired rj45 port to accept poe. you need a wire for a plug anyway...
Hi Alan I am new to this whole world of automation. I am looking to setup motion sensor lights for my kitchen, bathroom and hallway . With the light bulb, If It can be the normal LED light bulb ? Or it has to be smart light bulb ? How does the pairing works between the motion sensor and the light bulb ? Sorry if this sounds a stupid question to you Thanks in advance
My go to led strip now is 60led pm sk6812nw addressable tape and used with d1mini/wled. Very bright but obviously pixels can be programmed. Dims very low as well. Bit over kill if you want just white though. 5m+d1mini 5v psu still cheaper than 2m hue with smooth looking strip as pixels are closer.
I really wish there was more details automation on wled with esp32 etc can't seem to find any, I'm off grid and trying to push every boundary of being of grid and smart but all my difficulties with having many things not available in 12v dc I'm stuck with a lot of options. I want a few automations of lights especially the under bed soft wake up alarm and motion. Any links would be helpful or if home automation guy can help 😊
I have the original version of the Aqara motion sensors, and I'm not sure what version of HA it was changed/added but you can now adjust the motion detection duration for the original Aqara sensors within HA.
@@HomeAutomationGuy Did you update to the most recent version of HA? And what do you use to connect your Zigbee devices to HA? I don't know which version they added support for it but I have HA running in a Docker container and use Deconz and a Conbee2 stick for Zigbee, and the Duration option showed up with the last month or two for me on the Device page in HA under Configuration. It didn't used to be an option when I first added the Aqara motion sensors but it's an option now. I changed my duration to 10 seconds instead of the default 90.
This is super helpful thanks Alan, I'm currently planning some custom bathroom cabinets and was going to add LED strip to them. Would love to make these automated on a sensor so that if somebody goes. to the loo during the night they're a dimmed version. would you recommend the Phillips LED light strip for this and would I also need a motion sensor to setup the scenario? I would love to hide the motion sensor if possible.
Hey there Home automation guy. thanks for the video and advice, but here is what I found in my situation. I'm net to home automation... I have a HA setup with Zigbee usb dongle... I have some Motion sensors and 3gang light switched I bought of AliExpress, I found following your guide caused the motion sensors to activate the lights and it goes off after the set time yes, but the problem is, probably to do with the cool down period or something on the motion sensors I guess, the sensors will not activate the lights again unless there was NO MOTION detected for that period set, so if you keep moving around in the room longer than the set "State" wait period, then the light goes off... but since the motion detectors keep seeing motion, the lights stay off.. .so only when NO MOTION was detected for a longer period, then only of I walk in again, the lights will go on again... my workaround for this was in stead of using the "State" function and the "Call on service" function like you did, I did a "If then" function, so I set up a Trigger for device "Light 1 Motion sensor start detecting motion" and gave it an "action" on "Device" light on to turn on when "Triggered by" "Motion sensor start detecting motion", with a "Condition" that the light is off. then I added another trigger for "Stop detecting motion" on motion sensor for 30sec, with "Action" to turn the light off. and this seems to work much better as the lights now stay on when there is motion. I think its to do with the different manufactures on the motions sensors maybe... as I did everything like you did... but that did not work of my devices in my situation. I would like to hear your input on this. also I would like to know if and how one can adjust the cool down period on the sensors.... or is it only certain manufacturer products that can be adjusted as I don't see the function anywhere.
Apologies if this has been asked already. What light strip would you recommend for the bathroom that doesn’t require plugging in? I like the idea of adding a light strip for night time rather than turning on the main light which triggers the fan. It would be great for the kids at night. Thanks.
very cool i have many qustion i have smart switch that turn on the lights when i set timers , can i use a smart motion sensor to set it to turn on the lights when i walk into a barth room or kitchen please give the best guild
It can definitely be fun to fiddle and logic it all up, but If I were to argue something. You don't need to complicate things more than needed. -A dumb lightstrip with built in sensor under the bed would do the job for most people. -Instead of fine tuning motion and time, just increase the on time when motion is detected. I find it intriguing the urge to turn lights off as fast, even at work(I make electrical plans). Maybe some forget how little power LEDs use?
Question: does the P1 still have motion and occupancy? I thought I heard the removed the occupancy. Likewise, how are you plugging in your led strips under the bathtubs. Did you run more electrical?
Vibration sensor under desk to sense if sitting at computer and one on side of bath. Power monitoring to know if shower is turned on. Things get a little more difficult with Great Danes
Hi Alan, This 2 minute detection interval periode you talk about. Is there any way to adjust this in home assistant for any motion sensor? My situation is i have 2 old P hue motion sensors. One has a cooldown of about a minute while the other (exactly the same but in a different room) retriggers instantly. I can't find out why, please help.
One thing important i always add is to stop the automation if any user input is received. If the dim light automatically turn on, and i change anything or turn any other light on, that mean i don't want it to turn off.
I do same things, but add the chose option depending on the lux instead of the time, you know in case there’s an eclipse lol, but seriously, overcast days are less light so it is nice once it’s all tuned in, but also I disable the turn off with a door switch, and also make some things dependent on the humidity since that’s built in to the sensor too
I agree, I use the LUX where I can as well. Unfortunately the Sonoff doesn't measure the light levels, so I unfortunately can't use it where those sensors are. Living in London, where it's very often grey and raining, it's far more useful than the time based conditions.
Hi, hoping maybe you can help me with my setup that is not working for me. I am trying to setup an under bed light activated by the Aqara P1 motion sensor just as you have here, but with the Aqara M2 hub, and a Govee LED light strip and have added all devices in HA. I setup my automation exactly as you have here with trigger:state:P1 clear -> detected, condition:state:sun below horizon(it's currently 1:30am so definitely TRUE), and action:call service:turn on light. I can see that the motion sensor is detecting me as the aqara app pushes a notification to me also, and in HA I can run the automation manually and the light turns on, but when I walk by the motion sensor and get the push notification it does not turn on my light strip. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is not working properly here and wonder if you ran into anything similar with the motion sensor not pushing through HA to trigger the event?
I'd forgotten how bad and janky it was under there until I filmed it! Luckily you can't see it at all unless you crawl under there to film some UA-cam B-Roll footage 🤣
Great video! My question is, with all those motion sensors, what automations do you have set up to detect if they go offline or if their battery needs to be replaced?
I use a Blueprint to tell me when devices get below 30% battery level, and then I keep an eye on them. I've rarely had a device go offline, but when I do it comes down to me walking through the house one day and thinking "Wait, why didn't that light come on like it was supposed to?!"
I'm still looking for LED strips with CRI of 90 or above and tunable white. I found one, but it cost 200€ just for a 5m stripe without power supply or controller. I will replace all lights with tunable white with CRI90 because I find with CRI80 a room often looks pale or ugly, even with high price lights like Philips Hue
I have some LED strip holders that stick on to the wood with double sided tape without problems. Or you could use an aluminium LED channel and screw it to the underside of the bed
thev only suggestin I have is....simplify. My stairs cotroller is a 24 channel from Aliexpress and does individual steps as well as 2 side strips .Does a whole lot of different effects and programmable for your needs. For under the bed I use 2 PIR motion relays from Amazon ,one under each side table ,connected in parallel with 2 diodes .Advantage ,no zigbee motion batteries to worry about. Each powered by a Sonoff S31 lite based on the sun sensor in HA : Sunset / Sunrise .I also use the Sonoff motion and they have proven flawless. I also integrated the alarm (Ennvisalink integration) so I can use the zone sensors and arm automatically. Also those sensors exist already so why duplicate with battery power ? I also use the Sonoff touch light switches (3 buttons) as they can be used as smart buttons for scene control (group of lights) . Presence detection is definitely the next step though I am debating if the FP1 way (basically radar) is the best .
Thank you for another great video! I was just wondering: are you using the Hue Bridge? Or do you connect them directly to your HA environment? I currently have the bridge, but I'm considering moving them straight to my HA appliance so that I can get rid off the bridge and further decrease my power consumption. Any thoughts?
I pair them directly to Home Assistant using the SkyConnect USB Zigbee dongle. If I were you I'd keep the bridge if you're happy with it, unless you already have a USB Zigbee Coordinator. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I don't think the Hue Hub consumes that much power, so you wouldn't get a huge saving.
build a load cell bed weight sensor so only the side of the bed where the person getting up lights up based on bed weight. I also use mine to control the ceiling fan and bedside lamps
Good question! I use the FP1 to detect if ANYONE is in a room, and ESPresense to detect WHO is in the room. The problem with BLE based presence is that it only works for registered devices, not for guests and vistors.
@@HomeAutomationGuy yes, I can see difference for "is room occupied" vs "am I in the room" and why you might need one or the other. I think I'm going to use a combination of them, certain rooms that really only have known "users" (bedroom, office) whereas common areas a mmWave is better as you more care about overall presence.
Sounds great idea but you don't show how to connect these systems up it would be nice to do this around my house but not knowing how to connect it up or understand what system you use to do the suitable setting in and can it be all set up initially from your phone which could be left down somewhere in the house and you won't need to touch the phone once it is all set up thanks and great idea😊
Thanks for this video. I have something similar for my home but I did find the sonoff not reliable at all with z2m and eventually replaced with Aqara ( much better ). Have you had this issue any suggestion. Otherwise I’ll keep them in the drawer 😂
Hey I didn't pay attention to the final part of the video where you mentioned the human presence aqara sensor. In my other comment I linked an article for the Tuya version which actually works much better than the aqara version, at more than half the price! I tested it today and it works really well, and there's no need to actually group it with a motion sensor! The article does a comparison between the tuya version and the aqara one and found the tuya to be the absolute winner! I hope you could test it and do a video about it.
Could also use a smart plug to track when your using something like the TV or computer and want to keep lights on just as long as it has energy monitoring this is what I do
For the bathroom i got a trick for you. If you combine the motion sensor in the bathroom with a door sensor you can check if someone is in the room. If motion is detected inside the room an the door is closed you know there is someone in the room. That can also be Used for other rooms. Motion only has to be detected once in a room when the door is closed.
There should be a blueprint for that stuff on ha
It is called "wasp in a box"
@@jarongebhardt I use this as well for the bathroom, but some people seem to keep the bathroom door closed even if nobody is using it, which makes wasp in a box a bit less good. I also use HASS.Agent to expose lastactive and sessionstate of my PC in my office to detect activity and keep the light on.
I have been doing the same thing for my room ahah. But awesome to know that theres is a blueprint for it
Brilliant. Motion is detected AND door is closed equals Occupied until door is Opened 🎉
"If you look directly at an LED strip, you can clearly see the individual lights and it looks really fugly."
I'm not sure which is funnier - that quote, or the fact that UA-cam captioning actually captured that correctly. 😄
Great videos Alan! Thanks.
For LED strips, I like the 12V WS2815 type with 60 leds/m controlled with an ESP32 flashed with WLED. Pros: Cheap, bright even over a long length, individually addressable (each light can be controlled independently for amazing effects), and fully controllable with Home Assistant. Cons: Requires some wiring and ESP32 flashing knowledge (but not much) and they drain some energy even while off. Also Muzata makes some amazing LED covers that diffuse the light so well as to make them nearly spotless in direct viewing. Basically lightsabers. Thanks for your content!
WLED implementations have a relay option to open one leg of the led to kill parasitixlc draw
To stop my office lights turning off when I'm sitting still, I made a chair sensor using a cheap pressure sensor strip and a Zigbee contact sensor. There are few tutorials online on how to do this. My light automation has a condition to not turn the lights off if the chair is occupied, and it's been flawless so far. I had looked at a mmWave motion sensor instead, but the chair sensor worked out cheeper and easier to set up as it doesn't need wired power, and the parts were also readily available.
Bathroom lights also work well with a temp/humidity sensor. So the lights don't go off until while showering. I also use this for controlling the bathroom extractor fans. Really enjoying the house project of yours so far. Keep up the good work 💪🏻
This is what I'm trying to do; however, my humidity sensor doesn't refresh often enough. Did you run into this problem?.
@@cameronw99 I'm using the sonoff ZigBee temperature sensor and it only updates when humidity changes. If you search home assist forums, for "shower humidity fan" youll be in the right direction. I'm using a binary sensor that looks for humidity change against a humidty sensor I have in the bedroom, in the opposite room. It's been flawless for me so far. Kicks in withing 20 seconds of the shower running
A combination of motion and humidity could work well, or you can go for the mmWave sensors One thing I find with humidity sensors is if it is raining outside, the humidty tends to be higher. I don't mind the fan kicking in randomly, even if the bathroom is not occupied as that keeps the airflow when humidity is high, but I don't want my lights randomly staying on just because humidity is high. It can be half hour or more after a shower is completed for humidity to drop, so for me humidity would keep the lights on that long too. I'd rather use mmWave sensors if the motion sensor is not positioned correctly to pick up the movement in a shower. Not sure about your habits, but I tend to move a little when showering, which is enough to trigger the Aqara motion sensor with a delay of 5 minutes after no motion before the lights are off.
@@cameronw99 I have Aqara Temp/Humidity sensors and they respond quickly. I did have a Tuya one that was very slow, I found it useless in the bathroom as it also was very slow triggering the fan so I changed it out. You could try mmWave sensors, but in a bathroom, if you want your sensor to trigger your fan, it is likely better to get a humidity sensor that responds in a reasonable time.
@@EsotericArctos the way around this for when humidity is high in your house because of rain is to have 2 temperature sensors on the the same floor, but opposite rooms and base the humidity change compared to your base humidity in the other room. I created a binary sensor with the help of the HA forums that turns on when it's higher and use a state trigger to controll the fan automatically
Using a smart plug that measures power usage works really well for keeping the lights on whilst sitting still at a computer or watching TV. Set a condition that if the computer monitor or TV are switched on, don't turn off the lights! Thanks for the video, very thorough.
Excellent presence hack! Thanks for sharing
I more and more realize that you are developing exactly what I'm looking for. Great videos Alan! they are as good as the ones from Lewis.
For keeping motion live while sat at my desk, and to prevent my office plunging me into darkness, I find a pair of motion sensors works well. One in the corner of the room for general motion, and then one mounted under the desk. The one under the desk, because it's so close to my legs, picks up the slightest motion, so even when I'm sat still and the main room sensor doesn't pick me up, the one under the desk does.
have you tried millimeter wave sensors, these tend to be much better for situations where you are sitting still like at a desk or on a sofa
@@nial538 I've not. Can you give me the name of one you would recommend and I'll look into it.
@@markstev0 ld2410b, it connects directly to HA via bluetooth
Aqara PF1 and PF2 coming later this year.
For detecting me when I’m at my desk I have a cheap Sonoff motion sensor sticked in to the bottom of my monitor. I was afraid that this will not work but I have never had any time when the light turned off when I’m working. Typing and moving a mouse is enough.
Now I have an Everything Presence One and it is freaking awesome.
Great video, as always!
From a different perspective: I do everything in Node-red, and use HA just as a hardware abstraction layer and state/timer vehicle.
1. Sonoff hardware does indeed send a 'no motion' signal after ~1 min of no-motion, and then it's ready to send a 'motion' signal again immediately. It's still nowhere near as good as a radar in detecting occupancy, but for places like kitchen where you're moving around and not sitting still, it's okay.
2. Aqara hardware doesn't send a 'no motion' signal, it's generated by the software. So even if you're moving around, Aqara will still 'report' no-motion after a software-defined timeout. That's why I (historically) ignore 'no motion' signals and monitor occupancy in software (or via a radar).
3. I discovered that if I clean the surface with methanol just prior to attaching my LED strips, it holds - rock-solid. Even on the back of my TV, which gets warm :)
4. Radars allow you to be really aggressive when turning the lights off, I love that!
5. In my experience, light meters inside Aqara motion sensors suck.
6. If you have drop-ceilings, it's very easy to put a 5V adatopr and a radar there.
Can you export your nodered flow?
What radar are you using?
@@wwolfram33 A couple of LD115H from aliexpress, attached to m5stack-atom-lite which also act as BT-proxies for HA.
I found using timers created as a helper work heaps better for turning off the lights than relying on the no motion of the sensors.I have been caught so many times standing in the dark and these timers have solved my lights turning off while im in the presence of a motion sensor.. Great vid this with good tips and great explanations of creating the HA routines.
Great Explanation. I create a boolean helper for each zone. This boolean is used instead of the motion trigger. The boolean can be controlled based on additional requirements (like the TV playing something). This way I can make sure the lights stay on if the TV is playing but I'm sat still.
Thank you for all the information. I am definingly going to do these automations. I love your sense of humor.
I was using single on and off automations, the wait command is great and has now halved my automated lights list. I have a seperate Aqara motion sensor in a window facing east and it is ideal to monitor for a certain light level before running any automations. I have reused my old PIR alarm sensors by use of Konnected and then added additional sonoff or aqara sensors. I have found the addition of a sonoff sensor in front of my computer is enough to keep my lights on. Also, it is worth turning lights off gradually so you have chance to move again!
Thanks for informative video! One suggestion though:
Imho in the automation it's better to have a separate trigger for turning off the lights. Your trigger would then be "No motion detected for 30s". This will have the automation not staying in running state while still waiting for the motion sensor to go inactive for 30s. 😊
I have used the same tricks, putting the motion sensor under the bedside table, etc. and you covered those nicely. I also use the aqara FP1 sesnors for small motion changes in the areas where me and my wife don't move a lot, those work great. Also found a cheaper version of these that now works well with the new version of HA and that's a Microwave Radar Sensor Module LD2410 , you can get them for around 6 dollars US and they work great. I've used wled and a D1 mini for my LED strips everywhere, behind TV, under the bed, under the kitchen cabinets, under the bathroom vanity, well you get the idea.
Overall a great video. The changes I would make is to turn the light strips red at night to keep you night vision and way too many batteries to change after a year,
I do find the setting up of Automations rather more difficult in HASS than they are in HE so this video was very helpful. It looks as if there are a lot of options in HASS though automation wise and I am sure I will get used to it in time. I have a motion sensor under my office desk that senses small movements. Unless I nod off in the chair, that often happens after dinner, my office lights stay on. I have a 15 minute inactivity interval set on that for switching lights off, it works a treat.
Very usefull information.
Regarding motion sensors, I switched to presence detection sensors for rooms where this is necessary, like office or toilet. Motion detection for areas where you only pass, like hallways.
@Wolfgang Which presence detection sensor are you using ?
@@Tech_Verse TuYa TS0601_smart_human_presence_sensor
For the bathroom I also have an aqara door/window sensor, so when the door closes and motion is detected, the light doesn't turn off until the door opens again, and the motion goes to "cleared". My full bath doesn't have smart lights yet, but I will have to augment this with a humidity sensor as well, as we generally leave the door open for ventilation (old house, no vent fan) and to allow the cats access to their litter.
For all motion detected lighting, I create two input booleans for each automated light/group - "Do not disturb" and "Leave lights on" that will disable the "on" automation or disable the "off" automation, respectively. I also have two input number helpers that allow users to define their own low-light threshold for turning on lights, and brightness threshold for turning them off, as I've noticed my wife and I have... differing opinions as to when lights should be on.
Tell the wife it's better having the brightness set at what you prefer, then nothing.😊
I've been using HA for one week and I've done three separate motion light automations for my hallway with different time conditions for day/evening/night. This made me think I could just have one automation with three Choose Actions with different time zones instead. Thanks for the tip!
Glad you found it useful!
12:20 - If you don't have a system that detects luminosity you can create a sensor for the sun elevation and set it to activate only when the sun is below is a certain value. This comes in handy, for me anyway, as some rooms with this might get too dark 90 minutes before sunset. You can also create a luminosity sensor that does a reasonable job based on time of day and weather for your lighting automations (again, only necessary if you don't have the Aqara model with the luminosity sensor built in, which will be far more accurate). For folks that are new to Home Assistant, the values for the sun elevation can be determined through the "History" button (and possibly plugging in a few other sensors to compare time of day with states).
Good video
👍
Hi Alan, great series of vids keep up the great work. I also have leds coming on the landing to guide me to bathroom of a night, going to build a floating bed with leds, and love the bath one you've done going to copy that, looks amazing. One thing I think you could be interested in is the led colour can affect your sleep. White light can wake you up, take you out of sleep mode, and affects your night vision. By making light red, you can see with your natural night vision, plus it doesn't interrupt your sleep rhythm so you will go back to sleep quicker and deeper. I have mine set to red after 10pm until 7am rest of day is white.
Wonderful informative video. I don't think I have ever seen anyone install a LED defused cover like that. We just hold them on top and lightly tap it in.
Great job Alan. Great overview of strategies and ideas for lighting, along with a perfect level of detail to walk someone less experienced with Home Assistant to do it themselves, without so much focus on the technical that it might turn off someone who is not using Home Assistant. One of my favorite videos you have produced to date!! Looking forward to more of these.
This is such a terrific video... thank you! I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't know the Aqara motion sensors I already owned had the illuminance entity. This is a game changer for me as I was previously using the sunset/sunrise condition, but now with your tip my lights also come on during cloudy days. Your tip on how to easily automate one light with using multiple motion sensors is also super-helpful. Slowly but surely, my wife is seeing the benefit of the whole home automation thing, thanks in large part to your helpful tips. I'm grateful to have found you and your videos!
I'm glad you got some value from it!
Perfect timing. Walking along your journey to adapt them to my home.
Bathroom's can be tricky but if you pair a motion sensor with a door sensor and a smart switch that controls the exhaust fan, you can add conditions to not turn off the lights if the door is closed or if the exhaust fan is running. Works great for me
Thanks, Alan, for another informative video. I have a couple of similar automations running. With my landing, bathroom and bed LED strips, they switch to red between 10pm and 6am. This lets me see where I am going without bringing me fully awake. It helps preserve my night vision, lessens the interruption on my sleep pattern and is less likely to wake up my partner. Helps you get to sleep quicker too. Try it, you won't go back to white.
Yeh, I've seen a few people doing this and it makes sense. I just don't want my partner to ask me why we're living in a brothel, so it's best for me to stick with white for now 😉
Pure genius! I have aquara pir sensors in my living room and kitchen (I've got a everything Presence One ready to go but no case yet). I've been wanting to add an led strip under my handrail on the stairs for a while and never thought of "sticking" one on the ceiling... GENIUS! Ordered the sonoff sensor today and will "stick it up" tomorrow (LEDs are already done).
Thanks for the idea. 👍
I've also set my bedroom up with led strip but on a timer in HA. I work rotating shifts and find setting the leds to a dull red colour means it doesn't disturb Mrs Wife (Bonus points) while I have enough light to get changed by. We also we have the same LEDs working with an aqura push button (once for the bedside light, twice for the other half's, and push and hold toggles the led strip (wife's does EXACTLY the same so we can turn on/off each others bedside light (very useful)). Similar in the kitchen where the aqura pir will change the colour and brightness depending on time (9pm - 6am the LEDs are orange and 6am - 9pm their white). We find the white light in the morning too much ,🤣🤣
Sometimes it's the simplest things...
Very nice! I agree with the bright white and orange. You don't want to feel like you're in a hospital or 1970's office building when you wake up in the morning. But I prefer the bright cool white for when I'm cooking dinner, chopping food etc.
Hi, another great video with lots of good tips.This subject is the basis we all need and use and I must admit that I learned some new things, which improved my current motion sensor automations. Thanks and keep up the good work 👍
Glad it was helpful!
I've had Bluetack and similar take the paint off the wall if it has been in place for several months, but I understand why you'd do it. It is a little better than double sided tape. With LED Strips, unless I specifically need/want colour, I will get strips that are warm white/cool white only. I tend to build my own using ESPHome as the controller and the BTF Lighting strips are really good. For colour, again I prefer not using Hue as I prefer to use addressable LED's. I find the double sided tape on BTF lighting strips to be amazingly good. I have LED strips in the kitchen that have been held up for over 5 years now with just the original adhesive strip. On DIY strips, WLED is also really good.
mmWave sensors are really great for the areas, like living rooms, where you may be too still for normal PIR's, but I do still use PIR's for the initial turn on as mmWave sensors are a bit slow.
I thought the Aqara FP1 was also a corded device, requiring a power supply? Not sure why you pointed that out with the Everything Presence 1 and not for the Aqara offering.
For WLED I can highly recommend the controllers by Athom. I have both versions of the individually addressable strip controllers - the standard one and the sound activated one. They are very well priced and simple to use. Cheers 😊
Great video, thank you. I've moved to a new place and am starting from scratch, so the automation examples with the wait for trigger, choose, etc are great for me to work from.
I was using all sorts of conditions and multiple sensors and automations to achieve the same thing as a single automation in your example
Glad it was helpful!
Grouping snesors into group was a nice information! thanks! Also sun bellow horizont..i only saw sunset and sunrise..never seen it have other options too :)
Glad it was helpful! 😊
Hi, I really found this video useful, especially the part for grouping motion sensors: I had a rather complex automation in a room with two motion sensors, but with a group it became a real simple automation. Despite the 'shitty remark' you've got a new subscriber :)
Glad it was helpful!
@@HomeAutomationGuy yup I didn’t realise it was straightforward to do this with motion sensors either. Going to use this in the hall where I currently only have “good enough” coverage.
It's not something you really *missed*, but it's something that I have to account for in almost all my automations. Pets (and/or robot vacuums). If I had a dollar for every time a cat or a dog set off a motion detector, I'd have, well, a lot of dollars. So, I have to use placement wisely, and also use some Third Reality motion sensors because if you turn them upside down, they don't see triggers on the floor. I've also had to use door contact sensors (for the bathroom, as an example) in addition to a doorway motion sensor. If the door is closed, lights and fan on. If the door is open, lights and fan off. Though Switchbot has a door contact sensor that also has a motion sensor, so I probably should have used that.
Plus, we have a cat that is obsessed with light strips. I guess he can hear something in the light strips, because he's made it his mission in life to find them and rip them down.
It's always the edge cases that get you.
Alan, have you tried using Reusable Nano Double Sided Adhesive Tape or Pads to mount your smartdevices?
I have used Scotch Restickable Tabs and find these can be easily removed without residue marks (unlike Blu-tac), washed and reused, which for battery powered devices is useful.
Ive got two battery passive lights from lidl that are the best smart home products ive ever bought. Theyre instantaneous, not too bright and portable.
I have learned so much in this video, i am happy that i found this video and saved it for future reference, and i subbed!
I'm surprised no one uses door sensors together with motion sensors. Bathroom is the most obvious application but other rooms can work too depend on the layout. If you closed the door and then motion is detected inside the bathroom, you do not turn the light off at least till the moment the door is opened, and then you go back to motion sensor. Assuming you have only one door and you close the door when taking a dump. I have this set up in my home for a while and it works like a charm, never have to wave my hands sitting on the toilet or touch switches.
I currently have 2 motion sensors in my office. One under my desk and one on my desk. I've combined them in Home-Assistant as a group. If my PC in my office is on, the interval is 15 minutes, and if my PC is off, the interval is 20 seconds. This way, while I'm sitting still for a couple of minutes behind my desk, the lights don't turn off.
Your videos are very thorough, good work!
I appreciate that! Thank you!
Great Video! As mmWave radar i really do recommend the Tyua ZY-M100-S: ZigBee based, wall-mounted version
and ZY-M100-L: ZigBee based, ceiling-mounted version.
Quick detect (no need for PIR) and has also light detection.
Super quick installation into HA Zigbee2mqtt.
Have both for a few weeks and works just fine so far.
Well I've definitely just gone and ordered a couple of these! Thanks!
I use a Phillips outdoor motion sensor for lux readings for automations in the house .. usually 1000 lux outside for lights .. 500 lux for my landscape lights
Thanks for sharing! I've not tackled the outside yet as it's been winter. These will be my "summer" automation projects.
@@HomeAutomationGuy you’re welcome .. I used to use light sensor on individual aqora sensors to control my inovelli switches per room but like you my upper and lower stairs gets different light so that’s why I just use the outdoor sensor lux for every room .. I mean if it’s dark outside it’s dark outside 😂
Hi, You can also configure your lights with condition, about the state of your/partner's phone, if is charging and you wake uk first the light won't be on, or with bed presure sensor, if someone still sleeping after x time even after sunrise, light won't turn on 100% brightness :)
I use light level to decide if my motion controlled lights should turn on irrelevant of the time of day. By using a delay time for the "off" command I have it all done in a single automation. With this I added a condition that the automation will still act of the lights are already on so that the delay for off is restarted. This way the lights won't turn off if we are in and out of the area a lot despite the lights creating a light level value that would normally prevent the lights turning on. I works perfectly.
For areas of minimal motion I too use the mmWave devices, but a different one to you.
Nice one! That's a great solution
Thanks for the great guide. It is working great.
Glad it helped!
I haven't got any mm wave sensors working yet (I do have a bluetooth one that isn't playing) but will sort that soon, besides that this is exactly my learnings too, I set up my automations the same way with 1 slight difference, just to keep things tidy I will run all of the automations for i.e. "kitchen lights" in 1 automation, with all of the "sub" automations run in parallel. And have also started using timer helpers as these are quite versatile and can be used in other automations, and have different time values written to them in different scenarios, and are re-start proof. I also have a mixture of 433 rf sensors (esphome rf bridge) and aqara zigbee (didn't have much luck with the sonoff ones) as I had these from early on before the zigbee dongles, and the range is awesome.
We haven't touched a switch in years
Good video, keep em coming
Nice setup! Great work! I never thought of timer helpers, thanks for sharing - I'll be using that in an automation soon
@@HomeAutomationGuy they are handy, my example here is my el cheapo £8 433MHz doorbell which is triggered by my Broadlink RMpro, which has a few different sounds programmed into it, 1 will chime if the kitchen door is opened, by using the kitchen light timer (which is also used for turning on my re-purposed phone screen with fully kiosk, emby etc). I have 2 conditions that the PIR is off and the kitchen light timer is "idle" it will chime (essentially an occupancy sensor). No need for it to chime if someone is in the kitchen. I also set the timer if someone is detected getting home, and I set this to 6 minutes to allow time to get in the house, which will then revert to 2 minutes when PIR is detected. Nice
Yujiled sells some very high CRI rgbw strips in 12v and 24v that go great with a Shelly rgbw2 controller. Initial configuration of shelly is occasionally annoying in my experience, and I recommend a separate vlan, but those are the only drawback. They are rock solid in homeassistant once installed and configured.
If you want the ultimate colour effects you can pair an rgb strip next to one of yujileds violet strips for eye piercingly deep purples. Since the shelly can only control 4 channels you’re giving up high CRI white, but for effects nothing else comes anywhere close.
Really enjoying this series!
From the I have learnt that you are using the „Wait for trigger” to turn off the lights, while I am using the „Choose” option and I define both triggers at the start.
Fantastic!
about the bathroom, I added a doorsensor to the bathroom door. And on HA I made a "wasp sensor".
Now when the door is closed and the motion sensor detects motion the wasp sensor is turned on untill the door is opend again. No moore lights turning off when doing your business.
What is a wasp sensor ?
@@jeancouture its described right after where I mentioned it... if you want a deeper explination google either "wasp sensor" or "wasp in a box"
Great video ! While on toilet ,would you be able to post on this comment the yaml script for the LED bathroom light in that time frame ,I would like to apply that automation for my kitchen undercabinet LED.
Just a few things different from the PIR sensor which in my case is Sonoff Presence Sensor but still want to apply that script to my desire.Thank you !!
What I've learned from DIYing different custom sensors is that the temperature sensors cannot be combined with nearly anything. If the are, they pick up heat from the ICs in around and you get +"something random" to their readings.
Wondering what the simplest way to install a led strip to the underside of a wooden staircase hand rail. I want to hide the wiring as much as possible so I'd want to drill a small hole right where the railing is attached to the wall. Is there a recommended strip that has a low profile and/or flexible connection so that it could be easily installed flush with the bottom of the railing with minimal chisel work/modification to railing to make it clean? I'd probably be mounting the light strip in a flat channel so you couldn't directly touch it.
So the sensors Lewis makes that you talked about at tbe end. I wonder if there is any thought to putting a wired rj45 port to accept poe. you need a wire for a plug anyway...
Yes! He is making a POE version soon I believe
for the roller shades i use zemismart roller shades motors and for horizontal blinds i use sunsa wands
I've been playing around with the LD2410B, incredible value for an actual presence sensor.
I saw these on another channel and was really intruiged. Were they difficult to set up?
Hi Alan
I am new to this whole world of automation.
I am looking to setup motion sensor lights for my kitchen, bathroom and hallway .
With the light bulb, If It can be the normal LED light bulb ? Or it has to be smart light bulb ? How does the pairing works between the motion sensor and the light bulb ? Sorry if this sounds a stupid question to you
Thanks in advance
Hi, great video. Btw lux is how intensely a given surface is illuminated by the light source (for those wondering)
My go to led strip now is 60led pm sk6812nw addressable tape and used with d1mini/wled. Very bright but obviously pixels can be programmed. Dims very low as well. Bit over kill if you want just white though. 5m+d1mini 5v psu still cheaper than 2m hue with smooth looking strip as pixels are closer.
I really wish there was more details automation on wled with esp32 etc can't seem to find any, I'm off grid and trying to push every boundary of being of grid and smart but all my difficulties with having many things not available in 12v dc I'm stuck with a lot of options. I want a few automations of lights especially the under bed soft wake up alarm and motion. Any links would be helpful or if home automation guy can help 😊
I have the original version of the Aqara motion sensors, and I'm not sure what version of HA it was changed/added but you can now adjust the motion detection duration for the original Aqara sensors within HA.
Oh really?! I can't find that option on mine 😔
@@HomeAutomationGuy Did you update to the most recent version of HA? And what do you use to connect your Zigbee devices to HA? I don't know which version they added support for it but I have HA running in a Docker container and use Deconz and a Conbee2 stick for Zigbee, and the Duration option showed up with the last month or two for me on the Device page in HA under Configuration. It didn't used to be an option when I first added the Aqara motion sensors but it's an option now. I changed my duration to 10 seconds instead of the default 90.
This is super helpful thanks Alan, I'm currently planning some custom bathroom cabinets and was going to add LED strip to them. Would love to make these automated on a sensor so that if somebody goes. to the loo during the night they're a dimmed version. would you recommend the Phillips LED light strip for this and would I also need a motion sensor to setup the scenario? I would love to hide the motion sensor if possible.
Hey there Home automation guy. thanks for the video and advice, but here is what I found in my situation. I'm net to home automation... I have a HA setup with Zigbee usb dongle... I have some Motion sensors and 3gang light switched I bought of AliExpress, I found following your guide caused the motion sensors to activate the lights and it goes off after the set time yes, but the problem is, probably to do with the cool down period or something on the motion sensors I guess, the sensors will not activate the lights again unless there was NO MOTION detected for that period set, so if you keep moving around in the room longer than the set "State" wait period, then the light goes off... but since the motion detectors keep seeing motion, the lights stay off.. .so only when NO MOTION was detected for a longer period, then only of I walk in again, the lights will go on again... my workaround for this was in stead of using the "State" function and the "Call on service" function like you did, I did a "If then" function, so I set up a Trigger for device "Light 1 Motion sensor start detecting motion" and gave it an "action" on "Device" light on to turn on when "Triggered by" "Motion sensor start detecting motion", with a "Condition" that the light is off. then I added another trigger for "Stop detecting motion" on motion sensor for 30sec, with "Action" to turn the light off. and this seems to work much better as the lights now stay on when there is motion. I think its to do with the different manufactures on the motions sensors maybe... as I did everything like you did... but that did not work of my devices in my situation. I would like to hear your input on this. also I would like to know if and how one can adjust the cool down period on the sensors.... or is it only certain manufacturer products that can be adjusted as I don't see the function anywhere.
Apologies if this has been asked already. What light strip would you recommend for the bathroom that doesn’t require plugging in? I like the idea of adding a light strip for night time rather than turning on the main light which triggers the fan. It would be great for the kids at night. Thanks.
very cool i have many qustion i have smart switch that turn on the lights when i set timers , can i use a smart motion sensor to set it to turn on the lights when i walk into a barth room or kitchen please give the best guild
It can definitely be fun to fiddle and logic it all up, but If I were to argue something. You don't need to complicate things more than needed.
-A dumb lightstrip with built in sensor under the bed would do the job for most people.
-Instead of fine tuning motion and time, just increase the on time when motion is detected. I find it intriguing the urge to turn lights off as fast, even at work(I make electrical plans). Maybe some forget how little power LEDs use?
Question: does the P1 still have motion and occupancy? I thought I heard the removed the occupancy. Likewise, how are you plugging in your led strips under the bathtubs. Did you run more electrical?
Blu tack - nice idea! Thanks
Vibration sensor under desk to sense if sitting at computer and one on side of bath. Power monitoring to know if shower is turned on. Things get a little more difficult with Great Danes
Hi Alan, This 2 minute detection interval periode you talk about. Is there any way to adjust this in home assistant for any motion sensor? My situation is i have 2 old P hue motion sensors. One has a cooldown of about a minute while the other (exactly the same but in a different room) retriggers instantly. I can't find out why, please help.
One thing important i always add is to stop the automation if any user input is received.
If the dim light automatically turn on, and i change anything or turn any other light on, that mean i don't want it to turn off.
Thanks for the video. I’m going to make a few changes to my setup to make it a little more like yours. Enjoy your poo!
I do same things, but add the chose option depending on the lux instead of the time, you know in case there’s an eclipse lol, but seriously, overcast days are less light so it is nice once it’s all tuned in, but also I disable the turn off with a door switch, and also make some things dependent on the humidity since that’s built in to the sensor too
I agree, I use the LUX where I can as well. Unfortunately the Sonoff doesn't measure the light levels, so I unfortunately can't use it where those sensors are. Living in London, where it's very often grey and raining, it's far more useful than the time based conditions.
Thanks for this, i always wanted to know what the wait for trigger did
Also what’s the difference between a choose action and an if then?
A choose basically lets you do multiple IF THENs in a single block
@@HomeAutomationGuy cool no problem, thanks!
Hi, hoping maybe you can help me with my setup that is not working for me. I am trying to setup an under bed light activated by the Aqara P1 motion sensor just as you have here, but with the Aqara M2 hub, and a Govee LED light strip and have added all devices in HA. I setup my automation exactly as you have here with trigger:state:P1 clear -> detected, condition:state:sun below horizon(it's currently 1:30am so definitely TRUE), and action:call service:turn on light.
I can see that the motion sensor is detecting me as the aqara app pushes a notification to me also, and in HA I can run the automation manually and the light turns on, but when I walk by the motion sensor and get the push notification it does not turn on my light strip. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is not working properly here and wonder if you ran into anything similar with the motion sensor not pushing through HA to trigger the event?
Great video with some good advice. Thanks!
You are very welcome!
Loved this until I saw under the bed and my OCD went off the charts. 😂
Love the video though, keep up the great work. 😊
I'd forgotten how bad and janky it was under there until I filmed it! Luckily you can't see it at all unless you crawl under there to film some UA-cam B-Roll footage 🤣
Great video! My question is, with all those motion sensors, what automations do you have set up to detect if they go offline or if their battery needs to be replaced?
I use a Blueprint to tell me when devices get below 30% battery level, and then I keep an eye on them.
I've rarely had a device go offline, but when I do it comes down to me walking through the house one day and thinking "Wait, why didn't that light come on like it was supposed to?!"
I'm still looking for LED strips with CRI of 90 or above and tunable white. I found one, but it cost 200€ just for a 5m stripe without power supply or controller.
I will replace all lights with tunable white with CRI90 because I find with CRI80 a room often looks pale or ugly, even with high price lights like Philips Hue
So many bulbs remember the last state they were in when power removed / restored ? Seems it’s not a standard question option in features list 😮
How do you fix the LED strips under your bed? My are falling off all the time. I tried various double-sided tapes. No joy. Any tips?
I have some LED strip holders that stick on to the wood with double sided tape without problems. Or you could use an aluminium LED channel and screw it to the underside of the bed
thev only suggestin I have is....simplify. My stairs cotroller is a 24 channel from Aliexpress and does individual steps as well as 2 side strips .Does a whole lot of different effects and programmable for your needs. For under the bed I use 2 PIR motion relays from Amazon ,one under each side table ,connected in parallel with 2 diodes .Advantage ,no zigbee motion batteries to worry about. Each powered by a Sonoff S31 lite based on the sun sensor in HA : Sunset / Sunrise .I also use the Sonoff motion and they have proven flawless. I also integrated the alarm (Ennvisalink integration) so I can use the zone sensors and arm automatically. Also those sensors exist already so why duplicate with battery power ? I also use the Sonoff touch light switches (3 buttons) as they can be used as smart buttons for scene control (group of lights) . Presence detection is definitely the next step though I am debating if the FP1 way (basically radar) is the best .
Have you tried the hue motion sensors? I think they look better and mine lasted 4 years on the default AAA batteries
Thank you for another great video!
I was just wondering: are you using the Hue Bridge? Or do you connect them directly to your HA environment?
I currently have the bridge, but I'm considering moving them straight to my HA appliance so that I can get rid off the bridge and further decrease my power consumption. Any thoughts?
I pair them directly to Home Assistant using the SkyConnect USB Zigbee dongle. If I were you I'd keep the bridge if you're happy with it, unless you already have a USB Zigbee Coordinator. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I don't think the Hue Hub consumes that much power, so you wouldn't get a huge saving.
build a load cell bed weight sensor so only the side of the bed where the person getting up lights up based on bed weight. I also use mine to control the ceiling fan and bedside lamps
Have you a preference for HA automations over Node -red for occupancy / presence automations? Will you be doing any Node-red videos?
I've never actually used Node-red, so I don't have any opinions on it. A lot of people love it, and it looks pretty
Hi there, I was wondering wich program you use on PC. 14:45
He uses Home Assistant, so what you're seeing is the Home Assistant Automation Editor in his web browser.
A novice here. The hall way for example, do the lights need to be smart bulbs? How does it all work together with the sensors and bulbs etc.
They either need to be smart bulbs, or you can replace your light switches with smart versions (which is what I did)
Govee LED strips are great. Definitely lower cost than Philips Hue. Adjustable white temp is great. 10% to 1% test would likely fail though
Is there a reason you moved from espresense to FP1 (or similar) for detecting if you're in a room?
Good question! I use the FP1 to detect if ANYONE is in a room, and ESPresense to detect WHO is in the room. The problem with BLE based presence is that it only works for registered devices, not for guests and vistors.
@@HomeAutomationGuy yes, I can see difference for "is room occupied" vs "am I in the room" and why you might need one or the other.
I think I'm going to use a combination of them, certain rooms that really only have known "users" (bedroom, office) whereas common areas a mmWave is better as you more care about overall presence.
Sounds great idea but you don't show how to connect these systems up it would be nice to do this around my house but not knowing how to connect it up or understand what system you use to do the suitable setting in and can it be all set up initially from your phone which could be left down somewhere in the house and you won't need to touch the phone once it is all set up thanks and great idea😊
Take a look at the rest of the videos on my channel, they show you how to connect it up and what system I use l. Thanks for watching!
You have the luxory of stereo sub woofer outputs. This is uncommon. Can try again with the speakers in mono mode?
Eh?
Thanks for this video.
I have something similar for my home but I did find the sonoff not reliable at all with z2m and eventually replaced with Aqara ( much better ). Have you had this issue any suggestion. Otherwise I’ll keep them in the drawer 😂
Hey I didn't pay attention to the final part of the video where you mentioned the human presence aqara sensor. In my other comment I linked an article for the Tuya version which actually works much better than the aqara version, at more than half the price! I tested it today and it works really well, and there's no need to actually group it with a motion sensor! The article does a comparison between the tuya version and the aqara one and found the tuya to be the absolute winner! I hope you could test it and do a video about it.
I only learned about those Tuya devices recently, and have a couple on order. I'll be testing them out very soon!
I use those sticky magnetic phone holders to try out the sensor, i think ill try the blu tac next
For LED strips my go to is btf lightning strips with an esp8266 with wled flashed
Can you run a pir sensor and the strips on the same esp32?
@B4THEYEVOLVED yes, you can, you just need to use different pins
Thank you.
have you had any luck working with presence detectors?
I have, and I made a whole video about them! Check it out on my channel page
Could also use a smart plug to track when your using something like the TV or computer and want to keep lights on just as long as it has energy monitoring this is what I do
Very true! Great solution